Special issue on "Agency in Datafied Societies" published

The thematic issue on “Agency in Datafied Societies”, edited by Andreas Hepp and Stephan Görland, has been published as the latest issue of the journal Convergence. The special issue takes up the discussion on agency and deals in theoretical and empirical contributions with a possible redefinition of agency when communication in datafied societies is increasingly machine-based. The articles deal with agency in relation to algorithms, intelligent personal assistants, social media, card applications and automated checkouts.

The thematic issue includes the following articles, many of which have been published open access:

Agency in a datafied society: An introduction
Andreas Hepp & Stephan O Görland

Achieving agency within imperfect automation: Working customers and self-service technologies
Christian Pentzold & Andreas Bischof

Intelligent Personal Assistants in practice. Situational agencies and the multiple forms of cooperation without consensus
David Waldecker, Tim Hector & Dagmar Hoffmann

Reassembling #MeToo: Tracing the techno-affective agency of the feminist Instagram influencer
Astri Moksnes Barbala

Speaking, but having no voice. Negotiating agency in advertisements for intelligent personal assistants
Miriam Lind & Sascha Dickel

Fluid agency in relation to algorithms: Tensions, mediations, and transversalities
Ignacio Siles, Edgar Gómez-Cruz & Paola Ricaurte

Restricted but satisfied: Google Maps and agency in the mundane life
Peter Gentzel & Jeffrey Wimmer

Machinic agency and datafication: Labour and value after anthropocentrism
Jernej Markelj & Claudio Celis Bueno

Workers’ right to the subject: The social relations of data production
Phoebe V Moore